The Importance of Rest: How Downtime Fuels Creativity and Insight

We no longer know how to be bored. The world today is overstimulated. We fear boredom and being still. Everything is everywhere, and anything can be gotten almost immediately. Instant gratification personified is our era.

Our lives are filled with busyness rather than actual productivity, leaving no time for relaxation, to let our brains rest and recharge. We’re too focused on results to enjoy the journey in getting there.

Have you ever had a great idea in the shower or while driving to work? Doing repetitive, relaxing actions can help your mind wander, making connections you didn’t know existed. Some of my best epiphanies have come from a silent car ride or a specific song and how it made me feel or think.

When you’re a chronic busy bee, you don’t allow your brain to rest. Overworking it with endless to-do lists, tasks, and chauffeuring depletes your brain capacity, leaving you with nothing to show for it.

Boredom forces your brain to entertain you by coming up with different ideas. When you have nothing to do, you start playing around with thoughts, combining unlikely ones to create something new. That’s why it’s important to step away from our busy lives and allow boredom to creep in, letting our brains rest and practice relaxation.

Sometimes, it’s not possible to get a good night’s sleep. But we often forget that we still have the power in most ways. If you have a bad night’s sleep but want to accomplish something creative, take a nap. A short 20-40 minute nap can be amazing. Sometimes, even a 5-10 minute nap has been enough for me to clear brain fog and have a great creative day.

As a creative writer, I’ve wondered how other authors get their ideas. The most common response, and my own experience, is that ideas seem to come out of the blue. Maybe it’s a dream or a stray thought while driving.

In reality, they’re the result of an incubation period, your mind coming up with things and then finally giving you that eureka moment. Then there’s often a long pause, more incubation, as the pieces start to fall into place. When you have enough of those sparks (for me, even just two), you can build out the picture from there, like a snowball effect.

Another important tool for me in creative writing is allowing myself to daydream. I used to do this all the time, coming up with many different worlds and characters. Sometimes original, sometimes as a self-insert into a world from a book or movie. Like a muscle, the more I did that, the more sparks I had. I was inspired by everything around me, and it was beautiful and wonderful.

Then life happened. I was beaten down by the trudge of everyday life. Waking up early, going to work, being exhausted, doing mind-numbing things like watching show after show, sleep, and repeat. As a result, it became harder to have or build out ideas.

Only recently did I put this together for myself, and now I’m working on my daydreaming muscle. It feels awkward, like I’m too old to spend time daydreaming. And sometimes I’m just too tired. But I was so happy when I did this, and I want to be happy in that way again. Even if I never finish a story or publish a book (though that’s my dream), I’m better when I daydream and open my mind to different viewpoints and possibilities.

Sleep is important, but we also need space in our lives to allow our minds to wander. Maybe you can only do that on weekends or must leave the house to do it. Go to a park, a coffee house, or anywhere that might inspire you. The key is not to play on your phone or be on the computer. Just exist. People watch. Cloud watch. Do nothing. It will feel weird at first, but remember, it’s a muscle. To build a muscle, you must repeatedly practice.

Maybe you have something you want to think about, or maybe leave your mind blank. Play around with a complex problem you’re faced with. Realize that you likely won’t get an answer the first time or even the tenth time. But sooner or later, things will start appearing to you, little flashes of ideas, sparks of an answer. When that happens, it’s your job to start teasing it out, laying the foundation so your mind can keep building.

When was the last time you took a day to do absolutely nothing?